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More quandary… I woke up early again today. I think I’m just jazzed about having extended time off, and all the ideas I normally don’t have the time to really dig into are pushing at the edges of my thought process.

They’re like neglected children — or puppies — all clamoring for attention.

What to do?

Well, first, I need to realize that this is a really good problem to have. A lot of people never figure out just what they want to do with their lives. I know what I want to do, and I’m doing it.

I just need to figure out how to make the most of it — and also get support from others to keep doing it. I spend a whole lot of time researching and writing and publishing, yet so far, the majority of the support has been motivational, moral support. I’m not knocking that — far from it. The “emotional paycheck” (as they call it) has been hugely important to me.

The thing is, emotions don’t really pay the bills, and I’ve gotta do that. So, I spent the lion’s share of my time working jobs that will get me money, so I can keep up this work… keep it going. And do more.

The other thing that’s kind of throwing me off, is that I’ve gotten into a pretty good space with my life. Sure, I still have issues that make my days “interesting”, but they’re manageable. I’ve figured out how to either ameliorate them or work around them or just plain ignore them and move along with my life. All the energy and time and focus I spent on identifying my issues, addressing them, coming up with new strategies and techniques, etc., etc. …. well, it’s all paid off. And I’m in a really competent space right now (when I’m not mouthing off to police officers and managers at work, anyway).

And now where do I go?

I mean, seriously. I’ve felt like I was barely breaking even, for most of my 50 years. I’ve always had the sense that I was playing catch-up… and I wasn’t catching up very fast.

Now that I have the sense that I AM caught up, what do I do with myself?

If all you’re doing for your entire life, is trying to break even, and your whole life is geared towards laying low and minimizing risk, how can you transition to stepping out and above and beyond, when you no longer have to be chasing an ever-elusive goal?

If all your life you’re geared towards keeping things from blowing up, what do you do with yourself when you don’t have to be on constant guard? What do you do with all the energy that’s been spent on moment-by-moment damage control for so many years, when you’ve managed to achieve that level of control at a higher level?

And how do you keep yourself from imploding or going supernova from all the energy that comes up, when you’re not in constant fight-flight mode?

That there’s the question I’m wrangling with, this weekend. I have a lot of things I want to do, and that’s great. And in addition, I need to get used to the idea of moving forward into the unknown — and NOT having it all blow up in my face.

It can be a killer… especially because we can become fatigued from (over)doing things we really love and that make us happy.

When our brains become fatigued, they become more distractable. And when we are more distractable, we can end up expending valuable energy in many different directions.

Which means the limited energy we have is further dissipated. And that’s no good.

That’s where I am right now. Really tired out from four very intense days. I thought today would be easier, but it was actually packed full, with a lot going on. And now I am beat. One of the projects I was on at work got presented to senior leadership, and the president and CEO of the company was there — and liked it very much. My team members really got some good time with the Pres/CEO. I was worn out and couldn’t stay, but I’m glad the rest of them got to hang out with the top brass.

Anyway, I’m winding down, now, feeling pretty good about this week overall. I’m really excited because a project I started back in 1999, that has gone through many different iterations, is coming around again in a big and beneficial way. It’s pretty exciting, to tell the truth, and I’m diving back into it with more realism and fervor than ever before. Not only do I have more energy, but it’s much better educated and better organized than ever.

It’s very exciting.

And I need to pace myself so that I don’t burn out. I need to take things very steadily, very systematically, and not let things flare wildly out of control. I can so easily let myself get carried away by all the excitement, that I wear myself down and end up wrecking my progress. And then I’m worse off than before.

And then I get down on myself.

And then I end up even worse off than back at Square One.

Let’s not do that again, shall we?

So, my path is clear. I know what I want to be when I grow up — at least for the next few years. And I can relax now. I’m both excited and relieved. I can see a way out of my malaise and morass.

I just got done with recalculating my taxes for a couple of past years. I had tried to do it last year but process had me completely confused and intimidated, that I first messed it up pretty badly, and then I avoided it… and missed out on recouping thousands of dollars that were rightfully mine.

This is not so difficult, after all. And compared to how confused I got before, trying to organize my thoughts around it, the process this time was much more straightforward.

It’s been over a year, since I last tried to do this. I must be getting better, because this time I was able to do it with very little angst, anguish, and confusion.

Yes, there is progress.

I don’t even care about the missing thousands of dollars. This obvious progress is worth far more than that to me. And I’ll make up the difference in the coming years. I’m determined to do it.

Something magical happens when I quit worrying about everything before and after Right-Here-Right-Now.

I get to focus on what’s in front of me, and just concentrate my energy on that.

It simplifies things.

It relieves my taxed brain of all the what-ifs.

It makes it possible for me to put every single bit of my attention on the activity at hand, and give it my all.

And that’s a really good thing.

One of the drawbacks of mild TBI is that it can really screw with your attention. It makes you susceptible to distraction. It tires out your brain, which makes you even more susceptible to distraction.

Think about it — there are pathways in your brain that have been all messed up, like roads that got washed out during flooding, or a small town Main Street that got completely wiped out by a tornado. Your brain isn’t gone, but the usual ways of information getting around, are disrupted, sometimes wrecked. And you have to find your way through.

That takes energy. And it can be frustrating. It takes creativity and constant adjustment. And that takes even more energy. It takes self-discipline and self-knowledge to manage your moods and behavior, and not many of us have that in abundance, after our brains are injured.

Me included.

But if I can focus just on what’s in front of me, and not get pulled off in a million different directions, well then… things work much better.

And I can pick my way through the rubble, move it out of the way, and eventually build up paths that take me where I want to go. Over and over, it needs to be done. And it can get exhausting and daunting to do it. But you’ve gotta keep the faith, and keep looking at the signs of progress along the way.

Even the littlest ones.

Focusing on today, the immediate moment, enjoying the good little things, and finding ways I can address the bad little things… that’s the ticket.

I started a new exercise discipline yesterday. Basically, it’s about re-training myself to move. I have a lot of pain and mobility issues, which I usually push right through. But lately, it’s been worse. Life goes on and doesn’t wait for me to get out of pain before it sends things my way. I have had a lot of work to do around the house and yard, lately, as well as helping my elderly neighbors with some upkeep their homes. Lifting and pulling and hauling… it’s been a lot, and it’s not going away soon.

So, yesterday while I was surfing around the web in the morning (before going out to do hard physical work for 3 hours) I came across an approach that addresses the underlying problems with physical pain — basically, the body not moving properly. We can get used to compensating for injuries and change the way we move, and in the process, our muscles get used to doing things they’re not really built to do. And we can get torqued and turned around and stressed in ways that really shouldn’t be.

I’ve had a lot of injuries over the course of my life — head injuries just part of them. I never broke any major bones when I was a kid, but I fell a lot and turned and twisted ankles and joints, jammed fingers and toes, and generally got all twisted up and wrung out. I was very active — and I had crappy balance — so if you put 2 and 2 together, you get a lot of slips and falls and injuries.

I was also on high alert a lot as a kid. I couldn’t hear properly, couldn’t make out what people were saying to me, and I had to really listen hard, to keep up. Nobody realized this, so I had to just deal with it myself. I also had a lot of attention problems, light and noise sensitivity and sensitivity to touch, so I felt like I was always being beaten. Someone would just touch my arm, and it would feel like they were hitting me. It was nobody’s fault, that’s just how it was. My parents were kind of rough with me at times, but even if they’d been the most caring and patient and sensitive people in the world, it still would have felt like they were beating me.

So, there’s that. I still have issues with being sensitive to touch. I try not to think about it, because it really gets to me — and it’s worse when I’m tired, which is when I tend to get more emotional… so I reallytry to not think about it.

The net result of all of this, is that I’ve developed ways of moving that really compensate for those things. I’ve been on the defensive for a long, long time — avoiding making contact with people, avoiding people who are demonstrative (especially women), and just keeping to myself, because it’s so much less painful to be away from people. It’s heaven, actually. But outside my solitary heaven, there’s a world I need to move through, and I’d like to do something about all this physical pain I’m in.

So, I started doing these exercises, which are slow and controlled and involve a lot of resting and releasing tension. It feels great, when it kicks in. The thing is, it reminds me of how much pain I’m in, and it shows me how far I have to go, to really get moving properly again. My movements can be very jerky and clumsy, when I’m moving slowly — this new program says that will change as my brain is retrained to move. For starters, though, it’s a little disheartening.

But at least I have a place to start.

It’s also oddly emotional. I’ve been getting really upset over little nothings, this morning. Fortunately, I am by myself, so no one needs to be hassled by my mood swings. I’m just letting the emotions come up and then move on.

It all passes. That’s the one thing I’ve learned through all this — emotional volatility can be so extreme — and so quick. It doesn’t make sense to stay stuck in the emotional stuff and make more of it than need be. I just have to breathe and stay calm and let things just be… then reset my attention to something positive, and move on.

Physical pain is an interesting phenomenon. It can be so emotional (I’m not a fan of that), and it can be so pervasive and inescapable. I’ve been living with inescapable pain for nearly 50 years, and it’s no friggin’ fun. It’s taught me an awful lot, and it’s also altered my life in significant ways. I know what things will improve it, and I know what makes it worse.

So, I’m doing what makes it better. And I’ve got this new exercise routine that looks promising. I just need to do it — regularly and consistently. That is the best way to make progress.

I’m having a great Saturday, so far. I woke up early and got some work done on a project I’m helping some people with. It’s been a really good experience for me,because I’vebeen thinking about offering this service to people for a fee. Now that I’ve been through the process, however, I’m not sure I want to spend a lot of time doing this sort of work. It’s a little tedious, and it involves a lot of sitting, which is not that great for me — and is actually what I’m trying to get away from.

So, it’s good that I’ve gone through this exercise. It’s giving me more information to work with — so I don’t waste time on things I don’t really want to do.

On the bright side, I have been really good about not spreading myself too thin, so I can finish one thing before I start another. This is a big change for me. Massive, in fact. In the past, being scattered and not able to focus on one thing at a time cost me a lot. It kept me from moving forward, and I was always getting down on myself for being such a loser and never being able to complete anything. Now that I have been actively working on my focus, and I have more confidence that I can actually complete things I start — and I know how to say NO to things that distract me — I’m able to follow through, and it’s pretty awesome.

After I do some work around the house today, I’ll have my nap and then sit down to make more progress. It really feels fantastic, I have to say.

So, the day is shaping up nicely. I got a lot of chores done last week, so I don’t have to do a lot of little things today. I have a handful of big, important things that absolutely need to get done.

Well, things are changing some more at work. It looks like everyone who is here now, will not necessarily be there in a few more weeks. So, that’s interesting. And a little scary. I’m told that I am “safe”, whatever that means.

All that more motivation to get myself in gear and become as self-sufficient as possible. I’ve got a great idea for a new business, which ties together the parts I enjoyed most about what I’ve done in the past, as well as my future interests. And to top it all off, there’s a need and a market for what I have to offer.

So, that’s good. I just need to keep focused on it.

God knows, I’m motivated NOW…

But to tell the truth, that’s just the cold, hard facts of life. Companies don’t know how to run their business. They have completely wrong ideas about what constitutes success, and a whole lot of people in the world are content with just being comfortable… relieving the pain that they cause to themselves… and feeling important. They don’t really focus on results. They don’t really focus on profitability. They are more concerned about how the look to other people, and that’s all that matters to them.

And so they have to downsize. Because they don’t have high-performance lives. They don’t have high-performance workforces. They believe that everyone is on their own, when it comes to motivating themselves, and they don’t do much to help. Their darwinism comes around to bite them in the ass… and they sigh and wring their hands about “unavoidable circumstances”.

Please. That is very sad.

So, that being said, it’s time for me to go study and work on my business ideas. I have several, which I have researched and believe have a good chance of being useful to others. It’s really about being useful to others and communicating the value to them. It’s all about everyone else and what they need — and how to provide it to them.

And that’s what I’m going to do. That’s what I’ve always done in my 9-to-5jobs, and it’s served me well.It’s what keeps me safe, when others arebeing shown the door, and why not translate that to the outside world?

My main hurdle in doing all this, is distraction and losing focus. So, I have to keep my eyes on the prize and get there, one step at a time. Keep my priorities tightly trained on my intentions, and measure my progress at every step, so I know I’m going in the right direction.

This applies all across the board, quite frankly. And whether I am doing this in my own life and businesses,or I’m doing it “on the job” for someone else, the benefits and results are the same — good and solvent and always learning.

Okay, this is promising. Since my week+ off, I have been seriously thinking about how I organize my time and do the things that I want to do. I’ve been taking a close look at how I do things… how I hope… how I dream. And I have had some really useful insights.

In the past couple of years, I started a new company. I had an idea for an invention, and I went through the whole process of documenting it and filing provisional patent papers, building a website, selling a few working prototypes, and trying to get it off the ground. It was a good idea, I thought. I still do think so. But this past year, I have let it slide. I couldn’t figure out why that was. It was/is a good idea. Why not make it work?

The thing is, I have realized that I actually don’t want to be in the manufacturing business. That’s what it boils down to – manufacturing. And as much as I want to see my country be able to revitalize the manufacturing sector and give good jobs to Americans, I don’t want to be one of the people doing it. In fact, I really dislike manufacturing, as well as creating all kinds of new stuff for people to buy and sell. I’m much more of an ideas person.

Of course, I’ve always been involved in production of some kind or another, over the course of my life. I’ve worked in greenhouses and factories, and I’ve been involved in website production for decades. It’s been my bread and butter… the thing that kept me afloat over the years, making so much possible.

So, of course I think of how to do more production — this time under my own chosen circumstances — when I think of creating a new business. But when I get down to it, and I really start to do that handiwork, it occurs to me that my time is much better spent thinking and creating ideas, rather than physical things. And my abilities and knowledge are put to much better use, when I focus on putting them out there, rather than doing them in the background, while I trade my time and energy for money.

One of the things that’s always held me back, is the fact that I don’t have a college degree. I went for 4 years, but I couldn’t finish on time — for a number of reasons. And then I got busy, my life got exciting, I got hurt a bunch of times, and being as tired and as hurt as I was, finishing my degree just didn’t seem like it was within reach. I also got sick and tired of all the academic crap, and I just wanted to make money and live my life.

Nowadays, having a degree is almost a requirement. I can slip by, given my life and work experience, but it’s getting harder to do that, as more people with college degrees are getting more and more experience to compete with mine. So, I have to make my own way — and that means having my own business that I can develop.

And it means I need to realize what kind of business I don’t want to run. That includes stopping momentum on another business I’ve been seriously considering starting. I made some minor progress on the project about six months ago, but I suspended it for some reason I can’t recall. For the past several weeks, I’ve been doing the analysis to see if it makes sense, and – lo and behold – it does not. There could be good money there, but it’s more manufacturing. It’s on a much smaller scale than my other idea, but it’s still making stuff to send out to people. It will put me on a time clock, pretty much, getting stuff to people when they want it. It’s going to lock me into being responsive and customer-service-oriented.

And that’s not what I want to do.

I know that now.

So, this is a good sign. I have been spending the morning doing an inventory of all the projects I have started over the years, and it’s looking pretty comprehensive. And I know what I want to do next with a lot of them. This blog is up at the top of the list. I’m going to continue on here, and keep going with my other projects. Stay focused and realistic, and take my time at them — but not too much time, because then I get bored and start to distract myself for no good reason.

I’m being smart about it — laying the groundwork and using my noggin. 2015 is off to a good start.

I’ve been reading a book that I’m really enjoying — Profiles of Power and Success by Gene N. Landrum, Ph.D. There are all sorts of tasty tidbits in there, when he talks about the fourteen men and women he chose to examine as transformational leaders in their respective fields. He also talks about what miserable failures so many of them were.

Napoleon graduated near the very bottom of his class in military school. Edith Piaf never learned to read music. Isadora Duncan, who pioneered modern dance, only had one hour of ballet training and no other formal dance training. Landrum says, “great achievement has little to do with scores on a test, but more to do with performance on the stage of life. Jules Henri Poincare scored at the imbecile level on Alfred Binet’s IQ test at a time when Poincare was universally acknolwedged as the world’s foremost mathematician.”

So, yes, I do feel better. Not that I want to delight in others’ misfortunes, but hearing about how many people who changed the world for the better had either no formal training in what they did, or performed so poorly in their training, gives me hope. Because it says there’s something else at work when it comes to making your life worth living — and that something else is us.

Spurred by my enthusiasm with this book, I have been giving a lot of really serious thought to where I am going to spend my energy in the next year. I have a number of projects I would like to start (some of them I have already started), but I don’t want to spread myself too thinly, and I don’t want to sink a lot of time and effort into things that won’t pan out. I started a big project last year that took up a ton of time and seemed to show great promise, but in the end, I was looking at a likely prospect of losing money, it would have taken up far too much of my time, and I needed to back off and not pursue it further. I may pick up again later, since I have all the infrastructure in place, but I need to really think it through for it to make sense.

It took up so much of my time… only to fizzle out.

This coming year, I need to be smarter about things. A lot smarter. A lot more strategic. Less flailing around and busy-work. Less running around from place to place, and more sitting and looking at what I’ve got, prioritizing everything, and deciding how I want to handle it.

I’m already off to a good start. I’ve lasered in on two Big Ideas I have which show some real promise for supporting me and themselves.

I’ve also identified a handful of secondary ones that I want to do, just because I want to do them. Those are my “passion projects” which are all about doing things that will benefit others, rather than supporting me. This blog is a passion project for me, as is my book on TBI SOS – Restoring A Sense of Self After Brain Injury. Some things should be sold at a fitting price to people who value them and are willing to commit themselves to valuing them. Other things should be done with no expectation of return. TBI SOS is the latter. I need a balance of both, in my life. Yes, I do need to support myself and my work. But there are an awful lot of people suffering who need the help, and if I can provide it, then so much the better.

Anyway, I’ve been zero-ing in on my projects, culling the ones that take way too much time without giving much in return, and building up the ones that have a real chance of taking off. And in the past few days, I’ve made tremendous progress in the couple of projects I am focusing on. I have been planning and finding resources and getting clear on how I want to proceed. No more of the crazy running around from one thing after another. I’ve been doing that too long, and I’m tired of having nothing to show for all my work.

And it’s good. It takes the pressure off, and it also makes me a lot more productive. I’ve gotten so much done, just in the past few days, it feels like I have almost a whole week behind me. And it’s only Tuesday morning. I’ve been able to go out for long walks in the woods. I’ve been able to run errands. I’ve been able to lie down and take naps. I’ve been able to finish a big piece of a project I’ve been working on. I’ve come up with a bunch of ideas about how to streamline and automate my activities, using technology as my friend.

One example is with my blogging. I have a regular ritual each morning to sit down and write something pretty much every day. The intention is to publish something each day. But I don’t always have the inspiration or the time to do this every single morning. So, when I am feeling really inspired, I will write up a handful of posts, and then schedule them to be published at regular intervals, so I’m freed up on other days to do other things that inspire me.

And then I come back later to the writing, when I get my inspiration back. It usually doesn’t take long.

It really takes the pressure off. Committing to doing something every single day, can be hard for someone like me. Some days, it just doesn’t work out. But with different tools, I can overcome those blocks, and work around the limitations.

That’s what the folks in Profiles of Power and Success did. And if they did, so can I.

TBI is a funny thing. It can take so much away from us. And it can also add more things that we never had before.

I’m not sure if it’s me or my brain or just the normal parts of ageing, but I seem to remember less and less of my past, as time goes on. I can’t really remember what I have talked about with my neuropsych, in the past. I don’t know what I’ve mentioned to them, what issues I’ve worked through… it’s kind of fading away in a fog.

And I’m not sure I care. Because at the same time I’m losing connections with that not-so-happy past, it sorta kinda frees me up to enjoy a much happier present. And it’s the things in front of me — the blue sky overhead, the warm temps today, the taste of my tea saturated with butter and honey (it’s completely awesome – you should try it sometime), and the feel of just having time OFF from the grind for a week and a half.

All the aches and pains of my day-to-day haven’t disappeared. In fact, they’re coming on pretty strong, now that I’ve started stretching and exercising more. It’s been tough getting to sleep with all the pain in my lower back going on. And I’ve been dizzy and off balance and have had these headaches… but what-ever. That’s not the only thing I have to pay attention to.

So, I don’t. I look elsewhere. And I can find so much more else to focus on. How amazing is that.

And I think about how incredible it is, that I was raised in a time when the main goal of educators and people who were sent to help others, was to get everybody in a central zone of ability — to bring the weaknesses up to snuff, and not focus so much on the strengths — just fix what was wrong, and leave the rest alone.

But now I’m living a life that’s focused on the strengths I have — making them better, and not letting the weaknesses dominate my life. We all have strengths and ways we can contribute in the world… we just get caught up in trying to fix the things that are wrong, and we end up having our lives revolve around them.

The thing about focusing only on all that’s WRONG in the world (and our individual lives), is that we can always find something that’s wrong. No doubt about it. But while we’re concentrating on what’s WRONG, we so often miss what’s RIGHT. And then we miss out on the chance to strengthen the good, while we’re chasing down the bad that never ever seems to end.

I’m feeling pretty fortunate, actually. Looking around, I can see a lot of my peers who have been held back by that old mindset we were raised with. So many of them are still caught up in negativity and trouble-shooting states of mind, while the good they have right in front of them is rarely seen and fully appreciated. A lot of people my age still think of themselves as deficient… chasing after accomplishments and trophies to smooth over their lingering sense of inadequacy and prove to themselves that they’re okay after all.

And I totally understand how and why they feel that way. I’ve been there, too. Especially me, who has so many things I can quickly and easily point at and say, “Ah ha! That’s messed up!”

I guess I just count myself as incredibly lucky that I don’t always feel that way anymore. Some days I do, but on the whole… it makes more sense to me to focus on the things I can change for the better and move ahead… instead of just running around filling up the divots on the proverbial golf course of my life.

Well, it’s all a process and a journey, and I may feel completely different tomorrow. For today, though… right now… I’m feeling pretty good, and I’m not going to wreck it by hunting down what might be wrong that needs fixing.

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For all my brothers and sisters with brain injury, I would like you to read the following information on the fight or flight response which is triggered when we are under a lot of stress. Once the fight or flight response is triggered we are forced to deal with its consequences.Fight-or-flight response –en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response
The fight-or-flight response (also called the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response [in PTSD], hyperarousal, or the acute stress response) is a physiological ... keep reading